Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics

Offers a re-appraisal of the sources and philosophical significance of Peripatetic ethics as interpreted and appropriated by Antiochus of Ascalon.

Analyses afresh the naturalistic version of Peripatetic ethics preserved in Cicero's On Ends 5, our major source for the ethical system of the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Shows how he grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation (oikeiosis).This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation (oikeiosis), thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics.